CPU Overclocking

The 7740X is a very good overclocker, and Intel has done wonders with their 14nm+ process. It's the thing that sets Kaby Lake and Skylake microarchitectures apart and allows Kaby Lake processors to reach 5GHz stable. Not all CPUs will be able to do 5GHz stable with the 7700K, but I would venture almost all 7740X can hit the mark.

Even with AVX in use in HandBrake and no AVX offset, I was able to hit 5.1GHz stable on two 7740X. I only used 1.3v as well as XMP enabled so that I could have gone higher, but I wanted to keep a reasonable temperature under 90C max. While I can validate higher, I thought 5.1Ghz was a nice result.

I set CPU multiplier to 50x, enabled XMP, set CPU voltage to 1.3v, left everything else on auto, increased phase performance, increased current capabilities, and increased LLC to Turbo. It was easy to overclock the 7740X; it didn't prove to be a headache.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was a surprise. The CPU has an 112W TDP while the 7700K has a 91W TDP, so I expected it to use more power, but instead, it did the opposite. It uses almost the same amount of power, but less system power at full load. At idle it uses basically the same power.

The reduction in system power could be due to the more efficient VRM designs we see on X299 motherboards, and that might be what keeps overall CPU power low. Another reason could be that Kaby Lake-X's silicon improvements have also improved power consumption.

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